Scent of a Woman, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

February 9, 2011 Whitney Farmer 32 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A. She has an M.B.A, and hearts NYC as much as L.A…

Forget the Mercedes. Baths in deep old tubs found only in old limestone walkups are more luxurious.

I arrived in NYC a couple of days ago with the only winter gear able to be bought in Southern California: a full length down Calvin Klein coat, and faux furry snow boots that Snookie wore when she was arrested recently for public drunkenness. My newly-landed cabbie at JFK expressed sweet concern about if I was freezing after queuing for about 45 minutes as the sleet began to descend. He even carried my luggage over the snow drifts in front of my sister’s condo when I arrived tired but toasty in Prospect Heights.

The bubble bath was gardenia scented. When I was a kid, I used to ride my red Schwinn Stingray with the banana seat to a dentist’s office near where we lived after they closed to pick these blossoms. I’d try to pick them on the backside of the bush, as if lack of visibility affected the impact of my theft. I have stolen gardenias because that’s how much I love their fragrance. And I’m sure I can’t be the only one.

I have been wrestling with a question in recent days: Not how do I smell, but how SHOULD I smell. I use perfumes at the club that intentionally aren’t necessarily what I prefer but are connected to a persona that suits the genre of the night. For shows with older people who devour all of our barbeque within the first hour because they already are married and don’t have to pretend that they don’t eat, I wear food-ish scents like vanilla or berry. For disco nights or music from the 70s or 80s, I wear Jovan Musk for Women. When I was a teenager, I liked the smell but didn’t wear it often because it embarrassed me to say the name if someone asked: It was all about sex, and I was shy.

I also go through the 99cent Store for their fakes which I call “Eau de Povertie” that I’ll use to hopefully inexpensively cancel out what’s left behind after a mauling. Meth remnants are the worst. I remember the first time I smelled it at the Club. The pesticide/chemically cloud that I walked into had me looking around the room with sympathy, trying to figure out who was battling their cancer with chemotherapy. We had a large group of swinger couples that night. Only after I discovered that the smell pervaded the place did I realize what it was and why basically everyone was using it. There are some things I wish I didn’t know.

A couple of weeks ago, we were patrolling the floor to see who was smoking pot, only to find none. Later, we learned that a skunk had been hanging out on the pier and that its aroma had seeped down our stairs and left a skunk-weed-like vapor long after the creature had trotted off on its nightly rounds.

A scent can communicate. In the case of a skunk, it says, “Do NOT make me have to come after you!” If it’s the smell of coffee or bacon, it can say, “You are home and loved.” During the ice cold and miserable business suit clad time of my life, I wore a perfume called “Reality.” It said what I was living. I thought that I had found a scent that conveyed what my life was like now. But then, one of my servers said that it was her favorite “F*#k Me” fragrance, so my search continues.

The names hook me, but that doesn’t mean there will be a sale. ‘Happy’…’Euphoria’…’Miracle’… Even if I like the fragrance, I refuse to spend money on ‘Paris Hilton’, ‘Brittany’, or ‘Mariah’. And as much as I love the scent of gardenias and adore my colleague Tatiana El-Khouri, it seems too BFF to the stalker nth degree to wear ‘Tatiana’, named after Dianne Von Furstenberg’s daughter. (No idea if I spelled that name right…). The fragrance department at Macy’s gives a potential buyer more hardcore sales pressure than a mid-aisle kiosk in a Koreatown shopping mall.

I don’t want to choose a fragrance that will describe my life to strangers who walk within a three foot radius by happenstance. They will get Vanilla or Musk or Aquanet. But for me, I will try to find one that suits me well. It will have to speak of a feast and a garden, of joy and healing. And of deep bathtubs in Brooklyn.

Quote of the Blog, from a Chinese diorama carved from bamboo that I gave to my little sister and is on private display: “NEW BEGINNING – Don’t regret what past, make a fresh start.”